A Thoughtful Question on Canadian Immigration Policy

Q: If you could vote to remove all barriers to people entering or working/living in your country, would you?

Would you extend voting rights too?

The Canadian immigration policy is a somewhat removed approximation of this, which I do support on humanitarian ground.

Quickly put, the policy is

Welcome immigration in large numbers — the largest immigration rate per capita in the world by a good margin

Limit the immigration rate by Canada-as-a-whole’s ability to integrate new arrival

Monitor the emergence of reactionary racist sentiment, or the pushing of immigrant into isolated communities. If this occurs, you are doing it wrong or you are doing it too quickly. Adjust manner and levels as needed to maintain social coherence.

Maintain a process of continuous improvement so that over time the levels can be increased.

No reciprocity needed. Indeed, the ethical motivation for this approach is that tons of perfectly decent people are unjustly born in regions of the world with marginal survivability, or region overtaken by brutal dictators. The goal is to help take them out of there, not trading workers or trading tax payers.

The Canadian immigration policy is also in part motivated by business’ insistence that Canada’s low birth rate be redressed somehow, else they risk running out of customers. But however silly that is, it shouldn’t stop us from appreciating the other side of the coin, namely the goodwill intent of a generous immigration policy.